NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Bio-Reference Laboratories today announced a definitive agreement to offer Natera's non-invasive prenatal diagnostic test.
The test, which detects for trisomy 21, 18, and 13 and certain sex-chromosome abnormalities, will be sold by Bio-Reference's GenPath business unit.
The agreement, whose terms were not disclosed, is the second deal announced by San Carlos, Calif.-based Natera in the past week covering the test called Panorama. Last week the firm said it reached an agreement with Quest Diagnostics to offer the test, and together, the deals mark the commercial launch of the test.
The NIPD space has become highly competitive since Sequenom launched the first such test in the fall of 2011 called MaterniT21 Plus. Ariosa Diagnostics also has a test available called the Harmony Prenatal Test and in May 2012 the firm entered a deal with Laboratory Corporation of America to offer the test.
Additionally, Verinata Health, which was recently acquired by Illumina, has a US marketing deal with PerkinElmer for its Verifi test.
Panorama uses genotyping and sequencing technologies as well as cell-free fetal DNA in circulating maternal blood. It can be used as early as the ninth week of pregnancy. Panorama analyzes 19,500 single nucleotide polymorphisms in a single reaction.
In November, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued an opinion that NIPD tests using cell-free fetal DNA can be offered to patients at increased risk of aneuploidy.
Bio-Reference CEO Marc Grodman said today in a statement that ACOG's guidelines make it "clear that this is a beneficial service to women and their clinicians while facing high-risk pregnancies."